Give benefits to the rich - it's cheaper

Zoe Williams says there never has been an explanation as to why better-off people should receive benefits alongside poorer people (The means to an end, September 12). Here are five reasons:

1. It reduces stigma, and so ensures poorer people receive the help they need. Universal child benefit has a higher take-up rate than means-tested income support. 2. It ensures support for the welfare state; people are more inclined to pay in if they think they may receive something in return. 3. People are more willing to save if they know this will not affect their future benefit entitlement. 4. It costs the same. It is often cheaper to provide a benefit to all and then to tax it back as necessary from richer people than to have a complicated means test. 5. It still enables benefits to be targeted on those most in need.

Even so-called universal benefits are targeted on certain deserving groups, such as children. People who want all benefits to be means-tested rarely follow the logic of their own argument, as this would also mean opposing universal schooling and universal healthcare.Nicholas HillmanLondon

Zoe Williams's defence of means-testing is woefully simplistic and fanciful. Means-tested benefits fail to reach at least 4m of the poorest pensioners. Means-tested benefits are also complicated, demeaning and inefficient - £3.5bn goes unclaimed and they cost around 10 times as much to administer as a universal payment. And her concern about giving money to those who don't need it is easily solved through progressive taxation.Frank Cooper National Pensioners Convention